





WASHINGTON AND | EE | NIVERSITY 


On Commencement Day, June 22, 1871. 











ADDRESS” 


BEFORE THE 


LITERARY SOCIETIES 





By JOSEPH W. TAYLOR, Esa. 


Of Alabama. 





ADDAHSS 


BEFORE THE 


LITERARY SOCIETIES 


OF 


ASHINGTON AND J EE | NIVERSITY, 


On Commencement Day, June 22, 1871. 


By JOSEPH W. TAYLOR, Esa. 


Of Alabama. 


PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF 


Che iternry Societies, the Alumni Association, und the Board of Trustees. 





BALTIMORE: 


PRINTED BY JoHN MuRPuyY & Co. 
PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS AND BooKSELLERS, 


182 BALTIMORE STREET. 


WShiol 





¥ 


a a 


Or, a plea for the conversion of Wasl 


So iP ae pli ie? 











THE LEE MONUMENT: | 


and Lee University into a Memorial 
sity by the people of the South to cos 
their final and crowning monument 1 


memory of General Robert E. Lee. 


. 

| 

S 
. 

5 


ati ili 





“T have a self-imposed task which I must 
accomplish. I have led the young men of 
the South im batile. I have seen many of 
them fall under my standard. I shall devote 
my life now to traiming young men to do 


their duty im life.” 
[General ROBERT E. LEE] 








—_ 


ADDRESS. 


GENTLEMEN OF THE LITERARY SOCIETIES : 


WE have assembled to celebrate the festivities of Literature. 
Over many broad leagues of land and across many a mountain 
and river I have come, at your bidding, to bear an honored part 
in the imposing ceremonial. As I look out upon the surrounding 
scene I see, unrolled before me, the usual panorama of an Aca- 
demic celebration. The pomp and pageantry of banners and 
badges, of processions and music; the crowd of intelligent and 
appreciative spectators gathered from far and near to witness the 
exercises; the learned and accomplished Faculty and the honor- 
able members of the Board of Trustees of the University, paying 
to the occasion the deserved mark of attention and respect which 
their personal presence implies; and the diligent students, re- 
turned victorious from the intellectual campaign of the closing 
Academie year, laden with the opulent spoils of the conquered or 
partially subdued provinces of mind—all are here. But there 
is one feature of the celebration, distinguishing it from its imme- 
diate predecessors, which cannot fail to arrest the attention of 
every thoughtful observer of the scene. The spectators, the 
students and the official dignitaries of the Institution are all. in 
their accustomed places in the programme of the day, but where 
is he of the majestic form and the imperial glance whose presence 
for the last five years imparted such unwonted dignity and attrac+ 
tion to your anniversary festivals? You search in vain for his 
benignant features and his welcoming smile among the faces 
which look out upon you from this rostrum to-day. He comes 
not to the banquet of mind though every eye would grow brighter 
at his coming and every heart would kindle into fervor under the 
inspiration of his presence. In the meridian splendor of his use- 


6 


fulness and fame, crowned with the triple crown of the love, 
~ gratitude and admiration of his countrymen of the South,—whose 
prayers if they could have availed, would have made him im- 
mortal,—and second to none, living or dead, in the homage and 
estimation of the world, he has been borne, since your last anni- 
versary, from this scene of his earthly labors to the beatitudes of 
the Just. 

As scholars we may well be permitted, on an occasion like the 
present, to deplore the irreparable loss which the general cause 
of learning and education in the South and the interests of this 
University in particular have sustained in the death of this illus- 
trious man. Placed, at the close of the late war between the 
’ States, by the unsolicited but richly merited appointment of your 
Board of Trustees, at the head of this Institution, he brought to 
the discharge of his official duties the maturest virtues of the 
Christian, the noblest faculties of the instructor and the ripest 
accomplishments of the scholar. Though the world was ringing, 
from side to side, with his fame and he might have gone up 
securely to the topmost round in its ladder of wealth and prefer- 
ment, he was yet content, with a personal disinterestedness as rare 
as his talents and virtues, to devote himself in the seclusion of 
this Academic retreat, to the intellectual and moral elevation of 
the young men of the South. For five years, with the kindness 
of a father and the authority which preéminent abilities and 
distinction confer, he taught them in these classic halls, both by 
precept and by example how to be good as well as how to be 
useful and great in the bivouac and in the march of life. In the 
midst of these beneficient and scholarly labors he fell at the head 
of the young battalions of letters that he was leading to the con- 
quest of the Palestines of mind, and you laid him, in the silence 
of tears and with the benediction of your filial love and respect, 
in yon sheltered spot and made it, by the precious deposit of his 
dust, one of the Meccas of mind to be visited with reverence and 
kindling emotion by the pilgrims of Literature from every clime. 
This University of yours, blessed by his labors and made pre- 


— 


a 


eminent in fame among the Literary Institutions of the land by 
the official relation which he bore to it in the past, and by the 
custody of his honored remains which it holds in the present, 
owes the tribute of a grateful recognition to his memory on this 
its first anniversary celebration that has occurred since his death; 
and I know that I but respond to a wish uppermost in the hearts 
of the members of the two Societies in laying, as their represen- 
tative on this occasion, these flowers of remembrance upon his 
tomb. 

But as scholars and also as the friends of learning and educa- 
tion in the South, we may justly claim a still further privilege to- 
day with respect to the memory of the late lamented President 
of this University. He was, as you know, the foremost man of 
his day and generation in the love and admiration of the people 


-of the South. It is natural, therefore, now that he is numbered 


with the dead, that they should desire to erect a monument to his 
memory befitting the dignity of his character and the splendor of 
his fame. 

Several schemes for becoming monumental works in his honor 
have been already submitted to the public, some of which are 
now in process of execution. 

The mothers and daughters of the South, not yielding to the 
sterner sex in admiration for the character or in gratitude for the 
services of their illustrious countryman, have solicited contribu- 
tions from the public for some suitable memorial tribute to his 
memory at Richmond. 

The Faculty of this University, sharing to the full in the public 
estimate of the character and services of their late honored Presi- 
dent, are making in codperation with the Lee Memorial Asso- 
ciation of this place, praiseworthy efforts to raise funds for the 
erection of a mausoleum over his remains in the rooms in this 
Institution made memorable as the scene of his last unselfish 
labors on earth, and now consecrated as the shrine that holds 
his hallowed dust. This scheme, so felicitous in conception and 
which, from its nature, cannot become the rival of any other plan 


8 


for a monument on a larger scale, derives additional merit from 
the fact that it has been, from its first suggestion, entirely ap- 
proved by that venerable and accomplished lady whose regretted 
ill-health prevents her from honoring this celebration by her 
presence to-day, and who, now in the mellow evening of a long 
and useful life, universally beloved and respected by the people 
of the South, enjoys, in her great grief for the death of her illus- 
trious consort, the melancholy satisfaction of knowing that the 
tears of millions mingle with her own over his Joss. 

The last scheme submitted to the public for a monument to the 
great hero of the South was formally inaugurated by a citizens’ 
meeting held, without distinction of party, in the city of Rich- 
mond, a few months ago. This scheme contemplates the erection 
of a grand monumental pile or column in that city, by contribu- 
tions to be derived from all the people of the South, and funds for 
the purpose are being now collected by agents distributed through- 
out the Southern States. 

But while the general merit and the peculiar appropriateness of 
these proposed monumental works must be fully conceded, it is 
yet undeniably true that the public mind of the South is still in 
the pause of deliberation and debate as to the locality and the 
character of the final and crowning monument to be erected to 
the memory of General Lee. No monumental scheme has yet 
so united the public suffrage in its favor as to become the accepted 
finality of the popular mind and heart on the subject. The field 
is, therefore, still properly open for the suggestion of commemora- 
tive plans; and it is every way desirable that as many merito- 
rious ones as possible should be presented for the consideration of 
the people of the South. Out of them all, as so many contribu- 
tions to the same cause, it may be possible to select one, so pre- 
eminent in merit and claims, that it will unite all hearts and all 
hands in the common work of erecting a common monument to 
the memory of the greatest and the most admired hero of the age. 

In this view of the case, the friends of learning and education 
in the South, who are also the ardent admirers of the great and 


9 


good man who has now become a subject for monumental com- 
memoration, feel justified in bringing forward still another memo- 
rial scheme for honoring his memory. Indeed, as literary men, 
we have a peculiar right to do so, in virtue of the fact that the 
late President of this University, eminent as he was in other lines 
of thought and action and especially as a military man, was also a 
ripe and accomplished scholar, and devoted the last precious years 
of his great life on earth to the advancement of the cause of letters 
and mind in the South. To literature he turned both as a solace 
and an employment at the close of the Jate war. He fell, indeed, 
in the harness of learning and went up from our sight, in the 
chariot of death, from the summit of one of the mountains of 
literature. It is, therefore, with peculiar propriety that the lit- 
erature of the South inscribes his name on the list of her most 
illustrious votaries and counts his death a no common calamity to 
her cause. And, though the mantle of her ascended prophet has 
fallen on the shoulders of a literary Elisha worthy to wear it, yet, 
through all her stricken realm, she still mourns the departure of 
the Elijah of her intellectual hosts and, as a chief mourner for his 
loss, prefers a just claim to a chief voice in determining the char- 
acter of the monumental honors which are to crown his memory. 
That claim, I propose, in the interest of the great cause of learning 
and education in the South, to advocate to-day at the bar of these 
respected Societies and, through them, at the bar of the public 
at large. With that view I have chosen, as the theme of my 
Address—The Lee Monument, or, a Plea for the conversion of Wash- 
ington and Lee University into a Memorial University by the people 
of the South, to constitute their final and crowning monument to the 
memory of General Robert E. Lee. 

The occasion and the place of our meeting seem peculiarly ap- 
propriate for the discussion of a theme like this. The occasion is 
dedicated to the advancement of the cause of letters and mind. 
A plea for the establishment of an institution of learning of any 
description, and especially of a great Memorial University} is a 


direct contribution to that cause and is, for that reason, in peculiar 
2 


10 


harmony with all the requirements of the occasion itself. The 
place is linked in inseparable association with the name and the 
fame of the great and good man whose memory it is intended to 
honor by the proposed Memorial University. Here, in the midst 
of scenes fragrant with the latest reminiscences of his unselfish 
labors and life, and in the presence of an audience composed of 
his official associates, of the ingenuous young men whom he was 
guiding up the paths of usefulness and honor, and of the citizens 
of the bright and disinherited land which he loved and served so 
well, the plea which I propose to make to-day finds its most 
appropriate place for utterance and its selectest channel of com- 
munication to the public. 

Indulge me in one prefatory remark more, somewhat personal 
in its character, which it is due to the proper presentation of the 
merits and claims of my subject that I should make. I occupy a 
position which, I respectfully submit, entitles the argument that 
I am about to present to a thoughtful and candid consideration by 
the public. I hold, as you are fully apprised, no official relation 
of any description to this University. I came, a few days ago, 
and for the first time, into this portion of your state, a stranger to 
you all and shall soon go hence to be seen, perhaps, no more by 
the mortal eyes which now behold me. I am, therefore, under no 
possible bias of official interest, of personal feeling or of local 
attachment that could either pervert my judgment or impair the 
credibility of my statements. A private citizen of the South, 
coming from another and distant State, on a mission purely 
Academic in its character, to this far-famed seat of Literature 
and Philosophy, stimulated by no solicitations of others, allured 
by no hope of reward, but prompted alone by the common sen- 
timent of veneration and love for the character of the transcen- 
dent hero of my native clime and sincerely desirous that becoming 
memorial honors should be rendered to his great memory, I stand 
before these respected Societies and, through them, in the audi- 
ence of the whole people of the South and ask that both you and 
they will accord to me that candid and impartial hearing due to 


Ef 


the dignity of my subject, the disinterestedness of my motives and 
the magnitude of the interests involved in the final decision of the 
great question which I am now to discuss. And I would that 
He who “touched Isaiah’s hallowed lips with fire” would grant 
me the inspiration of thought and the utterance of speech to 
mount to the height of the great argument and would so fill my 
mouth with the words of persuasion and truth, that I may be 
able to convey to the minds of others a conviction equal to that 
of my own that the plan now proposed for a monument to our 
illustrious countryman, though the last in the order of time to be 
submitted to the public, is yet the first in the scale of merit and 
first in its claims upon the people of the South. 

I begin the discussion, as the perspicuous and orderly develop- 
ment of the subject requires, with a glance at the leading con- 
siderations which indicate the peculiar propriety of converting 
Washington and Lee University into the proposed Memorial 
University. Assuming, for the present, what I shall endeavor, 
in another portion of this Address, to prove, that such an Insti- 
tution would constitute the noblest, the most appropriate and the 
most enduring monument that the people of the South could 
erect to the memory of General Lee, there are many, and, as I 
think, very controlling reasons why this University would form 
the fittest foundation upon which to establish it. 

In the first place, then, Washington and Lee University oceu- 
pies a geographic position suitable, every way, for the proposed 
Memorial University. It is located in the State which, by every 
title, merits the distinction of having upon its soil the common 
monument to be erected by our people to General Lee. While 
the whole South justly claims an undivided heritage of glory in 
his great name and fame, Virginia is preéminently entitled to 
the largest share in the moral inheritance of both. He was born 
upon her soil. His life-long residence was within her limits. 
She has, and will have forever, the custody of his honored 
remains. No State in the South contributed more of blood “and 
of treasure to the great struggle in which he achieved his im- 


12 


mortal fame and won the undying gratitude and admiration of 
the people of the South. Her atmosphere will be fragrant to 
the end of time with the mournful, but holiest memories of the 
Lost Cause. Her cemeteries, her hills, her valleys and all her 
riven plains are populous with the graves of its martyred dead. 
The fact therefore that Washington and Lee University stands 
upon Virginia soil, the soil of a State entitled, on so many 
accounts, to claim that the final and crowning monument to her 
illustrious son shall be erected somewhere within her limits, forms 
a most persuasive argument in its favor as the foundation for a 
Memorial University. 

The geographic situation of the Institution is favorable in 
another respect for such a purpose. Nature and man have 
blended their ministry to make this a fitting seat for a great 
and prosperous University. These mountain elevations and 
retreats furnish a salubrious climate, health-giving breezes, 
attractive scenery and comparative retirement from the noise 
and confusion of the great outer world and a corresponding 
exemption from the multitudinous temptations which allure the 
young into the paths of vice. These natural advantages com- 
bine to make this a place where young men could be educated, 
in large numbers, under conditions as favorable to the preser- 
vation of their health and morals and to their progress in intel- 
lectual culture and attainment, as could be secured in any other 
locality in the South. This beautiful and sequestered town, set 
like a gem in the embrace of the engirdling mountains, famous 
for the morality, the intelligence and the hospitality of its inhabi- 
tants, furnishes already the facilities for board and residence 
needed by the University at present and, developed, as it would 
be, in time, by the patronage and stimulating influence of a great 
Memorial University, into a thriving and populous city, the 
Athens of the mountains and the pride of the South, would 
continue to furnish, in the future, abundant local accommoda- 
tions for the ever-multiplying throngs of students and visitors 
who would be drawn to the place by the educational advantages 


13 


of the University and the celebrity of the town as the locality of 
the monument of General Lee. 

The physical environments of the place are also in peculiar 
harmony with the monumental purpose to which it is proposed 
to dedicate this Institution. The mountains, nature’s monuments 
over the dead creations of the geologic past buried in the stratified 


. tombs of the rocks, are here to sentinel, with their awful forms, 


the grave of a hero the like of whom shall not again cross their 
morning and evening shadows through the ages which are to 
come. Yon river, the queen of the valley, spreading abundance 
and beauty, on every hand, as it flows, is like the fruitful moral 
current of his earthly life and whispers, through all its murmnr- 
ing stream, of the ceaseless on-going of his fame through the 
future. The fragrance and beauty which distil from the pastoral 
landscape of these sunny valleys and embowering trees typify the 
moral fragrance and beauty which exhaled from all the actions 
of his well-spent life and still float out, like incense, from the urn 
of his memory, upon the breezes of history. The moan of these 
wind-shaken forests of the mountain, blended with the voice of 
the breeze of the valley and the minstrelsy of the woods, forms, 
as it floats over his tomb, a fitting requiem, furnished by the 
cathedral choir of nature herself, over the grand sleeper below. 
Thus all the physical peculiarities of the place are of such a 
character as to become tributary to the monumental purpose of a 
Memorial University erected here as a monument to the memory 
of the illustrious Lee. 

The historic antecedents of Washington and Lee University 
constitute a further recommendation of it as the foundation for 
such an Institution. Its history goes back to the heroic days 
of the country. Grand and ennobling memories cluster about 
its origin and earlier progress as they do about its whole after 
career. The germ of the Institution was deposited in a village 
Academy established more than a quarter of a century before the 
outbreak of the American Revolution. Donations of books; of 
apparatus and of small sums of money were made to it, from 


14 


time to time, by the friends of learning and education in Virginia. 
General George Washington endowed it in the sum of fifty thou- 
sand dollars, the proceeds of valuable incorporated stock donated 
him, soon after the close of the Revolution, by the Legislature of 
his native State, but which his noble resolve to receive no pecu- 
niary reward for his public services in the war forbade his appro- 
priating to his own personal use. In recognition of this princely . 
gift the Institution received the name of its illustrious patron 
and, after several removals both prior, and subsequent, to its 
endowment at the hands of Washington, was finally located on 
its present site within the limits of this town which bears the 
name of the ever memorable place that received the first baptism 
of fire and blood in the opening conflict of the Revolution. From 
that period down to the present time, the Institution has con- 
tinued to receive occasional donations, sometimes of large amount, 
from private persons, showing that it has been at all times a great 
favorite with the public. During the late disastrous civil war 
it was sacked by the Federal army of invasion, its apparatus 
destroyed, its libraries scattered and ruined and its doors prac- 
tically closed. 

These few facts in the early and Jater history of the Institution, 
which are all that it is necessary for my purpose to recite, show 
that it has come down from the generations which are past, per- 
meated by the spirit and imbued with the memories of a grand 
and heroic age, and that the honorable scars of the recent great 
struggle are upon it. This proud record fits it, in a peculiar 
manner, to be at once the sepulchre and the monument of Robert 
E. Lee. The baptism of the prayers and the benefactions of the 
men of the Revolutionary and ante-Revolutionary era, enrobes it 
with a dignity and a moral grandeur in harmony with his charac- 
ter and life. The imposition of the hands of Washington in bless- 
ing and help upon it in the days of its early trials and struggles, 
only makes it the more worthy, by a prophetic dedication at the 
hands of kindred greatness and goodness, to perpetuate the mem- 
ory of one who was the peer of Washington, as patriot, hero and 


15 


man, and who like him drew his sword only in defence of what 
he believed to be the right, and returned it to its scabbard, when 
the conflict was over, without one spot of ambition or of cruelty 
upon its blade. The scars of the pillage and hate of the late 
struggle, which it may well wear as jewels in the crown of its 
merit, bring it into a sort of moral alliance with the memory of 
the great hero and patriot of the conflict itself which renders it 
all the fitter, as a monument, to perpetuate his fame. 

Nor must the present condition of Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity and the high estimation in which it is generally held by 
the people of the South be overlooked in the enumeration of its 
claims to be converted into a Memorial University. It is already 
@ prosperous and renowned Institution of learning, crowded with 
students from all portions of the country, blessed with a most able, 
learned and efficient Faculty, administered by an enlightened and 
trustworthy Board of Trustees and furnished with large libraries, 
competent apparatus, a comprehensive curriculum of studies and 
a liberal endowment. These numerous and valuable educational 
agencies and appliances would form a grand contribution to the 
proposed Memorial University. They constitute so much material 
for it, intellectual and physical, already provided, brought to the 
spot, placed in proper position and ready to receive the additions 
necessary to expand this University into the grander Institution 
into which it is desired to convert it. 

The general and deservedly high reputation of Washington and 
Lee University throughout the South, leaves no adverse prejudices 
and prepossessions to be removed, no damaging antagonisms to be 
conciliated, but opens a ready and easy access to the confidence 
and liberality of the people to whom the appeal would have to be 
made for the pecuniary means to develop it into the majestic pro- 
portions of a Memorial University. 

But a more potent and persuasive argument for the conversion 
of this Institution into a Memorial University is to be found in 
the fact that it was presided over by General Lee during the last 
five years of his life; was the intellectual child of his affections 


16 


and prayers; was the Institution for the advancement of which he 
felt the deepest solicitude, and made the most strenuous efforts to 
the end of his days; and is fragrant through all its academic 
grounds and edifices with undying memories of his life, character 
and services. 

He came here from out the dim cloud of unsuccessful war to 
labor, in patience and humility, for the good of his native South ; 
to give to the world its grandest example of heroic submission to 
the stroke of misfortune, and finally to die. He found the Insti- 
tution fallen from its former high estate through the pillage and 
the waste of war and almost broken in its hopes for the future. 
Devoting himself with singleness of purpose, and from a profound 
and deliberate sense of duty to the reconstruction of its shattered 
fortunes, he gave to it the arduous labors of the day and the 
anxious thoughts of the night; baptized it with his prayers; 
dowered it with his love; bent over it as a strong man bends 
over a child for protection and help; developed, in the adminis- 
tration of its affairs, the highest and best qualities of the great 
College President, showing that he possessed aptitudes and abili- 
ties for the pursuits of peace equal to those he had displayed in 
the conduct of war; exhibited new and even more shining traits 
of his great character; and died in the midst of wise and far-reach- 
ing but unfulfilled plans for the increase of its prosperity and use- 
fulness in the future. Nor were his labors in vain. Smitten by 
the Prospero wand of his energy and fame the Institution sprang, 
pheenix-like, prosperous and strong, from the recent ashes of its 
ruin and decline, and advanced with unfaltering steps to the front 
rank of American Colleges, both in celebrity and in the number 
of students frequenting its halls. These facts, known to the whole 
country and which form a valuable addition to the general history 
of literature itsclf, have greatly endeared Washington and Lee 
University to all the people of the South, and fitted it in a peeu- 
liar manner to become, as a Memorial University, the monument 
of its late illustrious President. To enlarge its foundations, to 
increase its endowment and to multiply and cheapen its educa- 


17 


tional facilities, thus carrying out his benignant plans for its 
future, should be, it would seem, a labor of love with all the 
true-hearted sons and daughters of the South. In so doing they 
would exercise a sort of paternal guardianship over the orphanage 
of the literary Benjamin of the old age of the great patriarch of 
their Lost Cause, and at once honor the memory of the dead and 
benefit the living by the merited benefaction. 

But the chief value of the official connection of General Lee 
with this University, viewing it as the foundation for a Memorial 
University in his honor, consists in the memories of himself which 
have thus become indissolubly associated with the place. There 
is not an object or a scene around us here to-day that does not 
suggest a remembrance of him, or that is not made holier to the 
heart of patriotism by the benison of his former presence which 
still lingers upon it. Out upon yonder azure mountains and wind- 
ing river and emerald valleys, he looked with the eyes that melted 
in love for his fellow-man, and that kindled in war against the 
enemies of his country, and mountain and river and valley wear a 
grander and a sweeter aspect for his look. Over this velvet cam- 
pus and these flowing grounds, he walked with the feet which trod 
always in the path of duty, which were slow and reluctant on the 
dread mission of war, but swift and eager on the blessed errands 
of peace, and left over them all foot-prints which, to fancy’s eye, 
shall remain there forever to guide the young mea of the South 
in the way they should go, and be also, 


“ Foot-prints, that perhaps another, 
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 
A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother 
Seeing, shall take heart again.”’ 


In these Academic halls he taught our youth, both by precept 
and example, the lessons of greatness and goodness, and the echoes 
of his paternal voice, and the image of his majestic presence will, 
in the creed of our hearts, pass out from them no more. And in 
yon neighboring mansion, he lived his grand and unselfish private 


18 


life; illustrated the beauty of Christian faith by the integrity of 
Christian practice; taught all the social and domestic virtues by 
the amenities and graces of his daily walk and conversation; and, 
in the end of his days, passed through the transfiguration of death, 
up the pathway of the skies, leaving the whole moral heavens of 
the South luminous with the pomp of his beatific ascent, and here 
shall abide to the end of time, the remembrance of a life so heroic 
and a death so grand. 

All these precious and ennobling memories, and far more than 
these, are the special and indefeasible moral property of this Insti- 
tution. They are incapable of transfer to another locality, for they 
are linked in indissoluble union with the spot on which we are 
assembled. They cannot die, for they are memories inseparably 
associated with the name and the fame of a man who was not 
born to perish from remembrance on the earth. In the interest 
of humanity, in the interest of morals and Christianity, and 
especially in the interest of the great cause of learning and edu- 
cation in the South, it is important that these precious and 
undying memories, so potent to educate the minds and hearts of 
our young men, and to mould their characters into the noblest 
type of manhood, should be converted into enduring educational 
agencies through the preserving and distributing ministry of a 
great institution of learning. The fact, therefore, that this Uni- 
versity is so populous with these golden memories, not only ren- 
ders its continued existence and prosperity a matter of great 
interest and importance to the people of the South, but fits it, 
in a special manner, for conversion into a Memorial University. 
One of the leading objects of such an institution, apart from its 
monumental purpose, would be to bring the young men of the 
South, as effectively as possible, under the elevating influence of 
the life and character of General Lee during the impressible 
periods of their Academic life. And where else could that be 
done with so much certainty and success as in this University, 
which alone, of all our institutions of learning, was blessed and 
honored by his official connection with its affairs, and by his per- 


19 


sonal residence upon its grounds; and which, therefore, alone has 
memories associated with him to claim, as its dowry of glory in 
the present and to transmit as an educational blessing to the 
future. Here, in this Institution, converted into a Memorial Uni- 
versity, these memories, preserved as in a moral vase, may be 
made to distribute, through educational channels, their moral 
fragrance and healthful influence among all the inheritors of the 
fame of our illustrious countryman, just as the sweet, volatile 
essences of the mineral and vegetable worlds, collected and im- 
prisoned by chemic art, in proper receptacles, distribute their 
odors and vivifying influence, in all directions, from their fragrant 
centres of radiation. Y 

One other reason why Washington and Lee University is most 
fit to be converted into a Memorial University by the people of 
the South remains to be presented. The sepulchre of General 
Lee is here. 

There seems to be, in the very nature of the case, a felicitous 
propriety in the selection of this as the burial place of our illus- 
trious countryman. A great man finds his most fitting place of 
interment on the theatre of his noblest achievements and in the 
midst of the memorials of his grandest triumphs. General Lee 
won brilliant vietories and performed illustrious actions upon the 
theatre of the entire South, and, for that reason, no spot in the 
entire South would seem to be without claims as a becoming 
burial place for his honored remains. But I submit, with entire 
confidence in the correctness of the position, which I shall elabo- 
rate in another portion of this address, that General Lee appeared 
in his most useful and attractive character on the theatre of this 
University ; that the noblest portion of his life was that which he 
spent in its service; that his grandest victory was the conquest 
which he made over the calamity of his military fall by his unsel- 
fish life and labors in these quiet retreats of letters and philoso- 
phy; that his loftiest achievement was the teaching of his fellow- 
countrymen of the South, by his personal example and labors 
here, how they may, in the end, convert the military defeats of 


20 


the past into the civil triumphs of the future; and that in this 
University he gave the crowning and most useful lesson of his 
life and character to the world. Here, therefore, in this quiet and 
beautiful retreat, far off from the multitudinous din and the fever- 
ish excitements of political capitols and commercial marts, amid 
the stillness and the grandeur of nature, with her mountains for 
sentinels and her myriad voices for requiem, where the great 
hero, patriot and educator of the South first laid down upon the 
loving bosom of the soil of his native State in the long sleep of 
death, with the field and the memorials of his scholarly labors 
around him, his remains find their most fitting place of repose. 
And here, also, must be the most fitting locality for the erection 
of the final and crowning monument to his memory. This is 
almost too clear for argument and too obvious for proof. While, 
as in the case of great and popular heroes, the whole country of 
their birth or adoption may, properly, and, in a few modern as 
well as ancient instances, actually does swarm through all its limits 
with memorial tributes to their memories in marble and brass and 
on canvass, yet the general sentiment and practice of mankind are 
in favor of erecting the chief monuments to their illustrious dead 
upon the spot in which their mortal remains are entombed. From 
the days of the Egyptian Pharoahs, who built the Pyramids as at 
once sepulchres and monuments for themselves, down to the very 
recent periods which saw the polished marble slab erected in yon 
neighboring cemetery over the honored dust of one of the greatest 
and best of the martyrs of the Lost Cause, you will find, with few 
and unexplainable exceptions, that the remains of the great attract 
the monuments erected to their memory, to the spot where they 
lie. Then, as the grave of General Lee is here, here, also, is the 
most fitting locality for his crowning monument. And, in the 
event it is finally decided that a Memorial University on this 
spot shall constitute that monument, the presence of his remains 
in the midst of its memorial buildings would form one of the 
most potent and valuable of all the educational agencies and 
influences of the Institution. From the graves of the great and 


21 


the good there issue evermore, by the high ordination of heaven 
in the constitution of our moral and intellectual being, streams of 
influence upon the hearts and the characters of the Jiving. The 
tombs of prophets and martyrs, and of men who lived to uphold 
or died to defend a good cause, though voiceless as the night, yet 
speak to us, through the laws of association, with tongues of fire 
and in words which kindle while they awe the soul. The light of 
immortal memories hovers over them, and from the jaws of their 
deep mystery come spells of influence that educate the heart, 
expand the intellect and prepare for the solemn conflict of life. 
The tomb of Lee, who was as good as he wwas great, will form, in 
one sense, an educational institution in itself in the land which 
g, and illus- 


=? 
trates so conspicuously by his character and fame now that he is 


he defended so grandly with his sword while livin 


dead. Though no audible voice may issue from its precincts 
of silence and rest, it yet shall speak to the people of the South 
through all their generations. Its utterances shall be of duty, 
of patriotism, of triumph over self, of the great and heroic in life, 
and of Christian fortitude and resignation in death. And they 
shall heed these utterances and go out from communion with 
the ennobling memories of the spot with invigorated courage 
and resolution for all the trials of private and all the conflicts 
of public life. The fact, therefore, that the sepulchre of General 
Lee is here, not only designates this as the most appropriate 
locality for the common monument to be erected by our people 
in his honor, but indicates the peculiar fitness of this Institu- 
tion for the memorial purposes to which it is proposed to dedi- 
cate it. 

Still assuming, then, what yet remains to be proved, that a 
Memorial University would constitute the noblest, the most 
appropriate and the most enduring monument that the people 
of the South could erect to the memory of General Lee, the 
considerations which I have now submitted, show, I think, very 
conclusively, that Washington and Lee University would form 
the most suitable foundation for such an Institution. 


22 


But, in order to adapt it to the larger and somewhat peculiar 
educational sphere which, in the event of its conversion to such 
a purpose, it would be required to fill, it would be necessary to 
enlarge its general Academic plan, even beyond its present most 
liberal scale and also to introduce certain modifications in its 
organic structure. 

To what extent an enlargement of its Academic plan would 
be required cannot, of course, be more than speculatively and 
in a general way, determined at present, as that would depend 
very essentially and, indeed, almost entirely, upon the amount 
of the endowment fund that could be raised for its support; no 
enlargement, at all, being either safely practicable or desirable 
beyond the ascertained pecuniary ability of the Institution to 
make it effective. But as the Institution, on its authoritative 
conversion into a Memorial University, would become in effect, 
in the manner to be presently explained, the common property 
of all the people of the South, and would, in all probability, be 
frequented by a very large number of students seeking instruc- 
tion in every branch of letters, art and philosophy, its Academic 
plan would have necessarily to be projected on a comprehensive 
seale; a scale large enough to respond to the educational wants 
of its numerous students and to make it answer the aspiration 
of the hearts of the Southern people for a first class monument 
to honor the memory of their beloved Lee. All, therefore, that 
can be considerately said on the point, in advance of a knowledge 
of the actual amount of the funds that can be raised for the 
endowment of the Institution, is, that it should be enlarged in 
its general Academic plan to as great an extent as its pecuniary 
resources will safely allow and should, if possible, be elevated 
to the distinction of being the foremost and completest University 
in the world. 

But upon the other point, as to the modifications which it 
would be necessary to introduce in the organic structure of the 
Institution to adapt it to the purpose proposed, it is possible to 
speak with almost positive definiteness. As the Institution, on 


23 


its conversion into a Memorial University, would become also 
memorial or monumental in its character, these modifications 
would, of course, consist of such arrangements as would impress 
upon it, both in its substance and in its practical evolution, that 
characteristic peculiarity. Without pausing to enumerate all the 
modifications which might be required for such a purpose, it 
will suffice for the aim of this Address, which is intended to 
suggest the outlines rather than to present the details of the 
subject, to say, that two of them would consist in organic pro- 
visions for the perpetual observance and commemoration in the 
Memorial University of the anniversaries of the birth and death 
of General Lee. The great objects to be accomplished by such 
an arrangement would be to express to the public the monu- 
mental character of the Institution, to keep the memory® of 
General Lee vividly alive in the minds and hearts of all and 
especially of the students and to bring the latter, as much as 
possible, under the quickening and moulding influence of his 
great life and character in the process of their Academic disci- 
pline and education. 

To suitably enlarge the Institution and thus adapt it to the 
cardinal purpose of being a fitting monument for General Lee, 
a very liberal endowment would be required. Here again, from 
the very nature of the case, it is not possible to speak with any 
degree of definiteness or precision. Were I to say that an 
endowment of millions of dollars would be insufficient to expand 
this Institution into a Memorial University worthy of the fame 
or commensurate with the merits of General Lee, I should simply 
state a proposition that would be demonstrably true in itself and 
which both your judgments and your hearts would, at once, ratify 
as true, without either abatement or qualification. But the limits 
prescribed for our just expectations and for our possible attain- 
ments in this matter of a memorial endowment, must be deter- 
mined less by his merits and claims than by the probable or actual 
willingness of the public to give of its substance for the erection 
of a monument to his memory. And as it is not possible, in 


> 


24 


advance of a tentative appeal to its liberality, to decide how much 
it would be willing to contribute for such a purpose, the most that 
can be said with propriety on the point at present, is, that a very 
large sum of money, say not less than one million of dollars, as a 
minimum and as much as five millions of dollars, which would 
be far better, if that amount could be obtained, as a maximum, 
would be required to found a Memorial University on such a 
scale as to make it a monument worthy of General Lee and 
becoming the people of the South to erect to his memory. 

The sources from which the funds for the proposed memorial 
endowment could be raised are principally these three;—appro- 
priations by the Southern States acting in their corporate political 
capacity as States; individual contributions by the people of the 
Sduth ; and donations from such persons in the Northern States 
as might be disposed to give of their means in aid of such an 
enterprise. 

The Southern States, as States, should, and doubtless would, 
be willing to make liberal appropriations, through their several 
Legislatures, for the endowment of a Memorial University founded 
in honor of General Lee, who drew the sword in defense of the 
autonomy of the individual States within the recognized limits of 
the Federal Constitution, perilled life, property and reputation in 
their assertion, and went down, in unavoidable defeat, on the 
bloody field of war, with the conquered banner of the rights of 
the States in his hands. Such a recognition of his services in their 
behalf would be both timely and appropriate, and would also, as 
we have every reason to believe, be fully in accord with the wish 
and sentiment of the several popular constituencies represented by 
the various State Legislatures. Nor would appropriations for such 
a purpose be violative of any provisions of the State Constitutions, 
as can be most clearly shown both by argument and authority, or 
even without frequent precedent in the history of State legislation, 
as donations have been made, in many instances, by the State Leg- 
islatures for the erection of both local and national monuments ;— 


the Legislature of South Carolina, for an example in point, haying 


25 


many years ago appropriated the sum of ten thousand dollars in 
aid of the Washington monument in the Federal metropolis. 

The people of the South, we may safely assume, would be both 
ready and willing to make liberal contributions, in their private 
capacity as individuals, for the endowment of a Memorial Uni- 
versity, accepted by them as the most appropriate monument that 
they could erect to the memory of General Lee. It would be due, 
indeed, no less to themselves than to his great name and fame that 
they should do so. As the Memorial University, considered as 
his monument, would express to mankind, in the present and in 
the future, their estimate of the life, character and services of 
‘General Lee, it would become the standard by which their valua- 
tion of them would be judged, and, as that is really and deservedly 
very high, they would desire, I suppose, that the Institution, con- 
sidered as the symbol of their admiration and respect for his char- 
acter and memory, should, in the magnitude of its proportions and 
the liberality of its endowment, adequately express that which it 
was intended to represent. Placing the matter on this purely 
selfish ground alone and omitting any reference to the numerous 
other and higher considerations which, it is believed, would con- 
spire to render an appeal to the people of the South for contribu- 
tions to the endowment fund of a Memorial University, nearly or 
quite irresistible, I feel persuaded that they would, from motives 
of personal pride and as an act of simple justice to themselves, 
respond most liberally to such an appeal. That they should do 
so, would also be due to the memory of General Lee himself. His 
love for, and services to, the people of the South make all but 
adoration his due at their hands, and however grand might be 
their contributions to honor his memory, they would still be- 
largely debtors for sacrifices and benefactions which find no ade- 
quate or fitting compensation in mere pecuniary values. A con- 
viction of this sort would doubtless contribute largely to swell the 
popular contributions to the endowment fund of a Memorial Uni- 
versity set apart as the monument of General Lee. Besides, as 
the Institution, as will be presently shown, would be for the com- 

3 


26 


mon benefit and use of the people of the South, the solicitations 
of private interest would combine with the sentiment of personal 
pride and the impulses of gratitude, to provoke a grand and teem- 
ing liberality throughout the entire South. 
Contributions for the same purpose might also be expected from 
many liberal and well disposed persons in the North. The people 
of that section scarcely yield to the people of the South in admira- 
tion for the character and in veneration for the memory of General 
Lee. These sentiments will continue to spread there, and will, 
in time, become both universal and intense among the masses of 
the people, with the dying out of the passions and the passing 
away of the prejudices engendered by the late war. The day, * 
indeed, cannot be very far distant when the North will unite with 
the South in proclaiming Robert E. Lee to have been one of the 
grandest specimens of American manhood, and in placing his 
name, as common property, on the brightest scrolls of our com- 
mon American history. There are hundreds, yea thousands, in 
that section to-day who would gladly contribute, were the oppor- 
tunity presented of doing so in some unobjectionable mode, to 
render fitting honor to the memory of the illustrious Southerner. 
The endowment of a Memorial University would furnish a com- 
mon neutral ground upon which these admirers of General Lee in 
the North could unite with the people of the South in rendering 
common memorial honors to his memory. As there would be 
nothing political in the nature, results and bearing of such an 
Institution, there could be no possible compromise of political 
sentiments or antecedents, either express or implied, in the act 
of aiding to endow it. And through the process of these blended 
contributions of the two sections in the present, to found a Memo- 
rial University, as his monument, and their blended patronage to 
it, in the way of pupils, in the future, the recognition of General 
Lee, as one of the greatest and noblest of American worthies, 
would become gradually nationalized, and the two alienated and 
lately warring sections, might thus be brought to grasp each others 
hands, in the act of mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, over 


27 


the grave of one who, though born upon the soil of one section, 
and devoting his life to its service, was yet too grand in his char- 
acter and too glorious in his fame to be appropriated as the exclu-' 
sive property of either. In this way the very monument of Gen- 
eral Lee would become tributary to the accomplishment of the 
noble aspiration of his heart, in the last days of his life, for the 
complete obliteration of the bitter memories and the common scars 
of the late war between the sections. 

The endowment fund for the proposed Memorial University, 
which might be derived from the three sources now enumerated, 
would, in all probability, be largely augmented by legacies and 
by donations of specific sums of money, of books, apparatus and 
other educational appliances made from time to time, in all por- 
tions of the country and from abroad, by the admirers of General 
Lee desirous of honoring his memory, by contributions to the 
Institution, as his monument, and also by the friends of educa- 
tion seeking a safe and perpetual investment of their charities to 
the general cause of learning and education. 

Assuming that a competent or, at least, a very liberal endow- 
ment for a Memorial University could be obtained from the sev- 
eral sources just pointed out, it would be-the dictate, both of justice 
and of a sound educational policy, that the Institution should be 
open, free of cost or charge for tuition or academic privileges of 
any description, for the reception of students from each Southern 
State, and from the contributing communities or individuals in the 
North, on the basis of numbers proportioned to contributions to 
the endowment fund. That is, each Southern State and each com- 
munity or individual in the North contributing endowment funds 
should be entitled to send to the Institution a number of students, 
which, as compared with the whole number, shall be of a ratio 
equal to that between the contribution, in the particular case, and 
the entire aggregate of the funds composing the endowment. Thus, 
suppose the aggregate endowment of the Institution be, in round 
numbers, three millions of dollars, and three thousand students 
the maximum number that could be conveniently accommodated 


28 


and instructed in it at one time, then, as the larger divided by the 
smaller number yields a quotient of one thousand, it follows that 
the ratio of representation in the Institution would be that of one 
student to each thousand dollars of contributed funds. Hence 
each State, community or individual would be entitled to send 
to the Institution a number of students to be ascertained by 
dividing his or its contribution, expressed numerically in dol- 
lars, by the ratio number, one thousand. Therefore, a State 
contributing two hundred thousand dollars to the endowment 
would be entitled to send two hundred students to the Institu- 
tion free of charge for tuition and academic fees of every descrip- 
tion. 

Such an arrangement for the distribution of the educational 
advantages of the Institution would be eminently proper and just, 
as it would strictly proportion benefits to the price paid for them 
in the way of contributions to the endowment funds, would operate 
as a salutary and, indeed, a required limitation upon the number 
of students admitted into the Institution which, in the very nature 
of the case, would tend constantly to excess, and would possess the 
additional merit of offering a powerful stimulus to the competi- 
tive liberality of the States, and the people of the States of the 
South, as well as of Northern communities and individuals. 

The opening of the Institution, in the manner proposed, for the 
gratuitous instruction of students, would be of immense and per- 
manent benefit to all the people of the South, as it would bring 
the advantages of a first-class University within easy reach of a 
numerous and very meritorious class of young men who, without 
such a provision, might not be able to obtain a Collegiate educa- 
tion at all; and would, also, enable it to carry out the declared 
purpose of Washington in bestowing his princely benefaction upon 
this Institution, which was to provide for “the education of the 
children of the poor, particularly of such as have fallen in defence 
of the country;” as well as to execute the noble wishes of General 
Lee himself, who, speaking of his plans for this Institution while 
he was its President, was often heard to express his anxiety to 


29 


have it so endowed as to bring its advantages within the reach of 
the poorest young man in the country who desired an education 
and showed he had the ability to receive it. 

A Memorial University, established and endowed by the people 
of the South, upon the plan which I have now briefly, but, I fear, 
very inadequately sketched, and dedicated to the instruction of 
their sons free of charge, through all the coming generations of the 
future, would be an object fitted, in the bare contemplation, to 
kindle the enthusiasm alike of the patriot and of the scholar. 
As a monument it would constitute an imposing addition to the 
world’s stock of commemorative works. Erected in a spirit of 
self-sacrificing patriotism by the impoverished and war-wasted 
people of the South, it would confer distinction on them as its 
founders and reflect imperishable honor upon the memory of the 
hero deemed worthy of such a grand monumental commemoration. 
In the splendor of its endowment, the dignity of its purpose, and 
the grandeur of its educational equipment and proportions, it 
would be the foremost institution of learning in the world. 
Owned and patronized by all the people of the South, it would 
become the central sun of their entire educational system. Year 
by year, it would pour into the bosom of each Southern com- 
munity an ever increasing number of graduates and of proficients 
in the various specialities of the University curriculum; thus pay- 
ing back to the States and the people of the States of the South, 
in the cultivated minds and hearts of their young men, a noble 
annual interest upon the principal of their contributions to the 
endowment fund of the Institution and diffusing and maintaining 
a spirit of closer unity and of more cordial fellowship, in both 
thought and action, among all the people of the South. Between 
it and the several State Colleges and Universities there could be, 
in consequence of their common ownership and patronage, neither 
exasperating jealousies, damaging rivalries, nor unfriendly rela- 
tions of any description, but there would exist rather a constant 
and vivid interchange of the comities of the commonwealth of 
mind and of the courtesies of a common literary sisterhood. Its 


30 


educational offices would endear it to the popular heart. Its 
memorial consecration would enrobe it with moral dignity and 
grandeur in the popular mind. And as it would be foremost in 
dignity and importance among all the Colleges and Universities 
of the South, so it would become, at once, and would ever con- 
tinue to be, foremost in the affections and in the veneration of the 
people of the South. 

I pass now to the concluding topic of this address. 

Washington and Lee University, suitably enlarged in its Aca- 
demic plan and equipments, properly endowed by the people of 
the South, and opened, in the manner I have described, for the 
reception of students, and, as would seem to be both desirable and 
proper, its name changed to that of the Lee Monumental Univer- 
sity or some other equally descriptive appellative, would, I respect- 
fully submit, constitute the noblest, the most appropriate and the 
most enduring monument that the people of the South could erect 
to the memory of their great hero and patriot, General Robert E. 
Lee. 

That it would form the noblest monument that they could erect 
to his memory can, I think, be very conclusively shown. The 
proper conception of a monument is, that it is a work of art 
designed to perpetuate the memory of a person or event. The 
ideal of it yields, on its philosophical analysis, three correlative 
elements or factors which are all necessary to it asa whole. The 
first of these relates to the material and structure of the monu- 
ment, and constitutes its art element; the second relates to the 
individual, the community or the people by whom it was erected, 
and forms its persona] element, and the third relates to the person 
or event whose memory the monument is intended to perpetuate, 
and forms its moral element. A monument will make a nearer 
or a more distant approach to its true ideal as a commemorative 
work of art, according as these elements, in greater or less abund- 
ance, are present, and more or less properly blended in it, as a 
concrete reality. If the materials of which it is composed be 
wanting in the durability and strength required in a monumental 
structure, or, if these be of the right kind, but inartistically and 


31 


unsuitably arranged, the art element being inadequately repre- 
sented in the monument, it will be defective as a work of art, 
and, to that extent, ignoble as a monument. So, if only one indi- 
vidual, or, at most, a very few persons out of a great many who, 
in any given case, might be supposed interested in the construction 
of a monument, actually build it, the fact would seem to imply 
a deserved want of general appreciation of the event or person 
intended to be commemorated by it, and thus the personal element 
being imperfectly represented in it, its impressiveness as a monu- 
ment would be lowered in a corresponding degree. And if the 
event or person, whose memory is intended to be perpetuated by 
the monument, be not, in the judgment of mankind and in reality, 
worthy of monumental commemoration, there is a lack of the 
moral element in it which disrobes it of all true grandeur and 
dignity. But if the materials ef the monument be suitable, and 
their arrangement artistic and proper, if the requisite number of 
persons unite in its erection, and if a worthy person or event be 
commemorated by it, it will be, tried by the test of its own ideal, 
a complete and, if on a scale large enough, even a grand monu- 
mental work. 

Let us now apply these elementary principles in the mopumen- 
tal art to the solution of the case in hand. 

Suppose, then, a memorial column or pile erected, say, in the 
Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond, Virginia. It is composed of 
fitting material, and is, every way, faultless as a work of art. It 
has been built by contributions furnished by the whole people of 
the South and by portions of the people of the North. It is in- 
tended to perpetuate the memory of General Robert E. Lee, a 
person who, whether considered as soldier, patriot, hero or man, is 
preéminently worthy of monumental commemoration. Here, all 
the elements or factors which compose the true ideal of a monu- 
ment, are present in due abundance, and are blended in due pro- 
portion in the concrete reality of the finished structure. It forms, 
it must be confessed, a noble and impressive monument, and would. 
worthily transmit the great name and fame of General Lee to the 
future. 


32 


Compare now, in idea, with this finished monumental shaft or 
structure, the proposed Memorial University. It is located, say, 
on the spot where we are now assembled. Its buildings, massive 
and grand, are composed of enduring materials, and are so con- 
structed and arranged by the cunning hand of the architect that, 
while they present finished models of architectural beauty and ele- 
gance, they take on, when viewed as a whole, the aspect of one 
great monument. They have been erected or re-modelled and 
enlarged by contributions made by all the States and people of the 
South and portions of the people of the North, and are dedicated 
as a monument to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, a man 
worthy of the grandest monumental commemoration. Here, as in 
the former instance, the three primitive elements or factors which 
compose the ideal of a monument being all present in the required 
abundance and proportions, the buildings form a monument quite 
as noble and impressive as the column. 

Up to this point, then, there would seem to be an exact parallel- 
ism or complete equality of merit between the column or pile and 
the Memorial University, viewed as a mere collection of memo- 
rial buildings, the difference, if any, being clearly in favor of the 
latter as the grander and more impressive monument of the two. 
But it is precisely at this point that the real and truly great differ- 
ence between them, both in merit and in character as monuments, 
is developed. For while the column or pile has no purpose or 
use beyond the point up to which the parallel between it and the 
Memorial University has just been drawn, the latter has a pur- 
pose and use which reach far beyond that point, and enrobe it 
with augmented dignity and grandeur. It is not a mere monu- 
ment and nothing more, as is the shaft or pile, but it is at once a 
monument, and also a great foundation, for the perpetual increase 
and distribution of knowledge and virtue among men. While it 
commemorates the dead, it educates the living. And this double 
function it is made to perform on such conditions and in such a 
way that its monumental character is not only not merged in its 
educational, and thus comparatively debased in its memorial ex- 


33 


pression and value, but derives additional dignity and impressive- 
ness from its alliance with the latter. The name of the Institu- 
tion, the commemorative exercises held in it on the anniversaries 
of the birth and the death of General Lee, and the universal pub- 
licity of its dedication to a memorial use, keep its monumental 
character prominent, at all times, in the popular recognition 
and belief, while the educational features are so engrafted upon, 
and intertwined with the monumental, as to become themselves 
commemorative in their type and expression. For they have a 
direct relation both to the wishes and character of General Lee. 
It was his known wish to have this Institution so liberally 
endowed that it might be able to furnish tuition free of cost to 
the poorer classes of young men, and this, on its conversion into a 
Memorial University upon the plan proposed in this address, it 
would be able to do. And as the moral influence of his charac- 
ter forms one of the chief educational agencies of the Institution, 
it is clear that in the very process of educating the young, the 
Memorial University commemorates the character of General Lee. 
Viewed in this: light, the educational features of the Institution 
not only become commemorative in aspect and functions, but con- 
stitute, in substance, an embodied declaration on the part of the 
people of the South, that so sacred and binding do they hold the 
mere known and declared wish of General Lee for the gratuitous 
instruction of the poorer classes of young men, to be, that they 
endow a great Institution of learning to carry it into effect, and so 
highly do they estimate his character, that they wish to constitute 
him, though dead, by the provisional arrangement of a Memorial 
University, the perpetual moral architect of the characters, and 
shaper of the destinies of the young men of the South. 

It is clear, therefore, that while the purpose of an ordinary 
monument is single and merely commemorative in its character, 
the purpose of a Memorial University is double and at once 
commemorative and educational in its character, with these two 
features so blended as to form the common monumental charac- 
teristic of the Institution. And as this double purpose is neces- 


34 


sarily, from its very nature in the present instance, more noble 
and impressive than either of its factors taken separately, it follows - 


that the purpose of a Memorial University is nobler and more 


impressive than that of a merely commemorative monument. 

Now it is the purpose which enrobes the structures of human 
art and hands with character and dignity and makes them more 
or less noble in reality and in contemplation to the beholder. 
If they have no moral object, furnish no admonition, or senti- 
ment or instruction to mankind and disclose no high end in 
their erection, however meritorious they may be as mere works 
of art, they are destitute of dignity and moral grandeur, and 
have no character that speaks to the comprehension and the 
feelings of men. The mighty pyramids of Egypt and numerous 
other fabrics which still exist in the Older World, either had 
no purpose beyond that of mausoleums, or if they had a higher 
object than that, it has perished from history and tradition and 
they stand in blank, grey stupendousness, giving no answers to 
the questionings of intellect and sending forth no awful utter- 
ance to the living. But the monumental columns at Washing- 
ton, upon Bunker Hill and upon the field of Waterloo, and 
many similar structures both in the Old World and in the 
New, have a well known purpose and it is that purpose which 
imparts to them whatever of dignity, of character and of moral 
grandeur they possess. 

Hence, as the blended educational and monumental purpose 
of a Memorial University, surpasses, as I have already shown, 
in dignity and impressiveness, the purpose of a mere monu- 
mental pile or shaft, it follows, that such an Institution would 
form a nobler monument than the latter to the memory of 
General Lee. 

But the point may be pressed further still. A Memorial 
University would constitute the noblest possible monument of 
any description that the people of the South could erect to 
General Lee. As has just been proved, it is nobler as a monu- 
ment, being nobler in purpose, than a memorial column or pile. 


30 


For the same reason it surpasses in memorial excellence any 
other kind of monument that could be devised. For what 
institution of learning of a grade inferior to a University, what 
foundation for the distribution of a charity, public or private, 
or what secular institution of any description in the whole range 
of human invention and pursuit suitable for appropriation to a 
memorial use, could rival, in the dignity of its objects and in 
the value and grandeur of its results, a great Memorial Univer- 
sity? Such an Institution, organized on a plan at all com- 
mensurate with the merits of General Lee and within easy reach 
of the pecuniary ability of the people of the South to accomplish, 
would be, as I have shown in an earlier portion of this Address, 
an object of transcendent dignity and grandeur, both in purpose 
and in character, and for that reason it would form the noblest 
monument that the people of the South could erect to the memory 
of General Lee. 

It would, also, be the most appropriate. 

The law of the proprieties applies with peculiar force to the 
case of commemorative works of art, especially those intended 
to perpetuate the memory of illustrious persons. The general 
and the controlling rule applicable to all the particular instances 
is that the monument should, in its style and proportions, con- 
form to the life, character and crowning services or labors of its 
subject and be, as far as possible, the typical history of his life 
or at least of that portion of it most worthy of monumental com- 
memoration, as well as also the memorial of his fame. Tried 
by the test of this rule, a Memorial University would constitute 
a peculiarly appropriate monument for General Lee as it would 
be in peculiar conformity with that portion of his life, character 
and services or labors which mankind will doubtless deem most 
deserving of memorial commemoration. 

He appeared upon the theatre of life in two widely variant 
characters; ran two totally dissimilar careers, and performed 
labors and rendered services of two very different kinds. 


36 


He was a military man of the highest genius and of the 
brightest achievements in the profession of arms, and his name 
has passed into history as one of the greatest and purest Cap- 
tains of the world. He was also a civilian of the most eminent 
virtues and of the highest aptitude for the pursuits of civil life, 
and, as the President of this University, evinced that, great and 
preéminent as he was in the affairs of war, nature had fitted 
him to be equally great and preéminent in the affairs of peace. 
And, if I do not greatly err in the estimate, it was in his capa- 
city of a College President, that he displayed most conspicuously 
the intrinsic greatness of his character and the true heroism of 
his life, performed his most valuable services and won his most 
enduring title to remembrance and memorial commemoration 
among men. The meteor glare of military fame has ever daz- 
zled and ullured mankind and betrayed them into a false valua- 
tion of the heroes of the sword and of the victories of the battle 
field. In the estimate of a sound philosophy, the heroes and 
the victories of peace transcend in dignity and value those of 
war and are far more worthy of monumental honors. Grand 
as General Lee unquestionably was, in plume and epaulet, mareh- 
ing, in war’s magnificently stern array, at the head of his mili- 
tary columns to the defense of the soil and the rights of his 
native clime, he was grander far, in reason’s eye, advancing, in 
the garb of the scholar, in the lead of the young cohorts of 
letters, to the escalade of the citadels of ignorance and’ the de- 
fense of the realms of the intellect against the invasion of the 
Saracens of the mind. In the camp and as a soldier he operated 
upon men only to fashion them into deadlier instruments for the 
dread ministries of war. In the College and as an instructor he 
moulded the minds and the hearts of the young for the blessed 
labors of peace. The armies which he disciplined and led to 
battle have already been dissolved and the discipline and tactics 
acquired by the men who composed them are valueless now both 
to themselves and to others. But the hosts of young men whom 
he disciplined and led up the steeps of knowledge and virtue in 


37 


. these Academic halls remain distributed, as nuclei of intelligence 
and activity, throughout the wide despersion of our Southern 
society and the discipline and culture which he helped them to 
acquire will continue to be useful both to themselves and to 
others throughout the whole period: of their immortal career. 
The battles which he fought and the victories which he won in 
arms, though they have served to immortalize his name and 
have invested the memory of the Lost Cause with imperishable 
renown, have yet proved, in other respects, comparatively value- 
less in result. But the services which he rendered the great 
cause of learning and education in the South by the last unselfish 
labors of his life as the President of this University, the honor 
which he conferred on all our Colleges by his official connexion 
with this member of the literary sisterhood and the complete 
model which he furnished in himself of a great and successful 
College President, will abide as permanent and inspiring influ- 
ences among the people of the South and continue to bless them, 
in result, for ages to come. As a soldier he taught the world 
the lesson of true greatness in war, of magnanimous forbearance 
in victory and of heroic fortitude in defeat; but as a civilian he 
taught it the sublimer lesson of a conquest over the calamity of 
the mightiest fall, and of a courage nobler than that of the war- 
rior, and showed his fellow-countrymen of the South, by his 
personal example and labors, how they may, in the end, convert 
the defeat of their Lost Cause upon the bloody fields of war 
into the triumph of a nobler cause upon the bloodless fields of 
peace. 

I conclude, therefore, that great as were the life, character and 
services of General Lee as a warrior and worthy as they most 
undoubtedly are of fitting commemoration, his life, character and 
services as a civilian were greater still and still more worthy of 
fitting commemoration. If this be so, then, if the manifest re- 
quirements of the commemorative art are to be observed in the 
case, a Memorial University becomes the most appropriate monu- 
ment that could be erected to his memory. For what memorial 


38 


honors so becoming could be rendered the memory of a great and 
successful College President, as to convert the Institution over 
which he once presided into a monument to perpetuate his fame? 
The preéminent appropriateness of such a mode of commemoration 
in the case supposed is too obvious and striking to require either 
argument or illustration to enforce its propriety. 

But a Memorial University would be the most appropriate 
monument for General Lee for another and very impressive 
reason. It would be in peculiar harmony with his last unsel- 
fish labors and aspirations on earth, and would, as it were, per- 
petuate those labors and carry forward those aspirations into 
grand and abundant fruition in the future. 

He came to this Institution from the overthrow of war to labor 
for the good of the people whose cause he had so nobly, but un- 
successfully defended with his sword. Of all the fields of labor 
which lay open before him, he chose the educational as the fittest 
for the accomplishment of the object which he had in view. No 
mercenary or ambitious motives prompted his choice. Nor was 
it a choice dictated by necessity. ‘The most glittering offers that 
could tempt cupidity or stimulate the aspiration for the honors 
which wealth confers, were made to allure him into the luerative 
fields of commerce and trade. His reputation alone, like the lamp 
of the magician in the Arabian tale, would have evoked the genius 
of riches at his bidding and made it the obedient minister of his 
will, so that he possessed, at all times, the means of readily repair- 
ing his private fortunes shattered by the vandal waste of war and 
the confiscation pillage of peace. But a profound and deliberate 
sense of duty, to the moral attraction of which his great soul ever 
unfalteringly turned, as turns the needle to the magnetic attraction 
of the pole, alone determined his choice. In his grand refusal of 
the lucrative offers for the use of his name alone in the enter- 
prises of business, he said: “No, I am grateful, but I have a self- 
imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young 
men of the South in battle. I have seen many of them fall under 
my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men 


39 


to do their duty in life.” And so the hero of a hundred stricken 
fields, the almost peerless chieftain whose deeds had filled the 
world with his fame, laid aside the sword and the epaulet of the 
warrior for the gown and the mace of the College President, and 
passed from the stern bivouac of the camp and the fierce excite- 
ments of war to the studio of the philosopher and the lettered ease 
of the scholar. It was not, however, a case like that of the fabled 
Hercules forced from the heroic labors of his life to endure the 
distaff and the woollen tasks of a penal servitude. Still less was 
it a case like that of the crownless Sicilian despot who, expelled 
from the throne for his vices, assumed the ferule of the pedagogue, 
that he might lord it over boys when he could no longer tyrannize 
over men. But it was a case grander far and far more abounding 
in the elements of the moral sublime than either. It was the case 
of a truly great and a truly good man, baffled in his efforts to 
serve and to save his country by the dread ministries of war, de- 
voting himself, in the sunset of his days, with the zeal and the 
energy of youth, to the high endeavor to serve and to save it, in 
another and a nobler struggle, by the benignant arts and the heal- 
ing policies of peace. And how laboriously, how conscientiously, 
and how successfully he bore himself in his office of a College 
President, living in the strenuous discharge of all its duties and 
dying in the midst of unaccomplished labors and unfulfilled aspi- 
rations for the moral and intellectual elevation of the young men 
of the South, your memories all attest and the world knows by 
heart. 

Now a Memorial University, viewed as the monument of Gene- 
ral Lee, would, in effect, prolong his educational labors and carry 
forward his educational aspirations to realization in the future. 
Through its instrumentality, though dead, he would be constituted 
a virtually living and still active agent in the educational fields of 
the South. The light of his great example and character would 
still abide, in its memorial halls, like a living presence, among the 
young men of the South; the tones of his paternal voice would 
continue to fall, in spirit utterances, upon their ears, and his coun- 


40 


sels, recorded in history or repeated by the tongue of tradition and 
renewed by the commemorative exercises of the Institution itself, 
would evermore descend, a quickening and ennobling influence, 
upon their minds and hearts. Thus, his monument would become 
the throne of his abiding and unbroken spiritual sovereignty over 
the young men of the South, and through its agency his educa- 
tional labors would be virtually repeated and prolonged in the 
future. 

Another and absolutely conclusive view of the case may be pre- 
sented. Had General Lee himself been consulted, during his life, 
on the subject of a monument to his own memory when dead, and 
could his modest and self-abnegating nature have been prevailed 
on to speak upon the point at all, we have every reason to believe, 
from our knowledge of his life and character, that he would have 
chosen the monument of a Memorial University. Personal disin- 
terestedness and benevolence were leading traits in his character. 
He was eminently unselfish both in public and in private life; was 
averse to personal display of any kind, or to exaltation of himself 
either in word or deed, and received even the merited commenda- 
tion of others upon himself and his actions, and the demonstra- 
tions of respect with which his presence was always greeted by 
the public, with manifest reluctance, and with a feeling bordering 
even on regret. A finer model of manly modesty and of complete 
self-abnegation, was never presented, in a great personage, for the 
admiration of men. His benevolence was, also, as conspicuous 
as his personal disinterestedness. He delighted in doing good 
to others; neglected no opportunity that presented itself of per- 
forming deeds of noiseless and unpretending charity, and was so 
abounding, both in the sentiment and in the works of beneficence, 
as to merit, as truly as Marcus Aurelius himself, the epithet of 
the Good. To a nature so unselfish and benevolent, the chief 
value of life would consist in the opportunities which it afforded 
for doing good in the world, and the most coveted commemoration 
after death would be to live in the memory of his good deeds per- 
formed among men while living, and in good works multiplied 


41 


and carried on by the perpetuating office of his monumental honors 
after his departure from the earth. Besides, a monument in mar- 
ble or brass, unquestionably appropriate and impressive as it is, 
has necessarily, from its very nature, a severely personal aspect in 
the relation which it bears to its subject, and is, for that reason, 
somewhat selfish in its character, and it does good to mankind, not 
directly and of set purpose, but rather by indirection, and by the 
reflex and, as it were, undesigned influence of the lesson which 
its moral object or its sentiment teaches the beholder. On both 
accounts, such a monument, while it would fail to typify the two 
leading traits in the character of General Lee, would have been 
little in conformity with his personal tastes, and still less an object 
of his choice as a monument for himself. But a great Memorial 
University, modest and unselfish, like his nature, in the personal 
aspect which it bears to its subject as a monument, and aiming, as 
he did, to do good to mankind by the intellectual and moral eleva- 
tion of the young, would be a grand emblem of his personal dis- 
interestedness and benevolence, and would, no doubt, both on 
account of the modest unselfishness of its aspect, and its manifest 
usefulness to the world, have been chosen by himself as ‘his pre- 
ferred monument over any other kind that could have been sub- 
mitted to his choice. But if General Lee himself would have 
chosen a Memorial University as his own monument, it becomes, 
for that reason alone, the most appropriate one that could be 
erected to his memory. 

It is so, also, for another reason. 

A Memorial University would form a preéminently grand and 
impressive monument, far in advance of those heretofore erected 
to commemorate the great ones of the earth, and, for that very 
reason, it would constitute the monument most appropriate for 
General Lee. He was himself a grand advance, as hero, patriot 
and man, upon the type of the world’s selectest and most admired 
characters. Of all its illustrious men, living or dead, the name of 
Washington alone stands out on the pages of history as his rival 


and peer. Warriors as great, or even greater than he, have lived 
zt 


42 


both in ancient and in modern times. Civilians of talent and 
attainment, as brilliant and varied, and cyen greatly more bril- 
liant and varied than his, have often appeared upon the theatre of 
_ the world. But for the equable balance, and the even endowment 
of both head and heart, and for the rare combination of all the 
qualities which constitute goodness, as well as greatness in human 
character, save Washington alone, none like him have yet arisen 
among men. As General Lee thus stands out in fact, as he will 
finally, in the recognition of mankind, and on the pages of his- 
tory, as one of the world’s two foremost heroes and men, so should 
his memory have accorded to it a grander monument than has yet 
been erected to any hero in ancient or any worthy in modern 
times. And such a monument, as I have already, in other por- 
tions of this address, abundantly shown, a great Memorial Uni- 
versity would be. 

Such an Institution, while it would serve, by its superior dig- 
nity and grandeur as a monument worthily to commemorate the 
life and character of General Lee, as one of the world’s greatest 
heroes and noblest men, would also reflect honor upon the people 
of the South as its founders, and might prove a potent inducement 
to mankind to honor the memories of illustrious characters by a 
nobler and more useful style of memorial tributes. The people of 
the South, in erecting the grandest monument yet known among 
men, to their illustrious countryman, would receive, at the hands 
of the world, the meed of the merited and double praise of hay- 
ing had the discernment to recognize his transcendent merit, and 
also the liberality and the gratitude to crown it with the monu- 
mental honors it deserves. Such a conspicuous instance of a nobler 
style of perpetuating the name and fame of distinguished men, 
might provoke mankind to a frequent imitation of the example, 
and thus, in time, the more civilized communities of the earth 
might come to be crowded with memorial institutions of various 
kinds, which, blessing the living while they honored the dead, 
would help to introduce a new and higher order of things in the 
world. And thus the age and the countrymen of Lee might be 


43 


able to appropriate to themselves, in an accommodated and loftier 
sense, the boast of Cwsar Augustus, who claimed that he found 
Rome brick and left it marble, in being able to claim that they 
found the world honoring the memories of its illustrious dead 
with marble and brass, which crumble in time and pass away, 
leaving no useful memorials of themselves behind, and left it 
honoring them with noble and beneficent institutions of learning 
and religion which scatter the immortal blessings of religious and 
intellectual culture along the pathway of all the generations, and 
whose influences for good among men will die out only with the 
extinction of the light of the sun and the going out of the blaze 
of the constellations in the heavens themselves. 

But in the next and last place, a Memorial University would 
not only be the noblest and the most appropriate monument that 
the people of the South could erect to the memory of General Lee, 
but it would also be the most enduring. 

The monuments erected by mankind, in the past and in the 
present, whether composed of the quickly dissolving materials of 
earth and wood, or of the more enduring substances of marble and 
brass, have already perished from the sight of men, or are rapidly 
passing away. The memorial altars of stone and earth, built by 
the patriarchs and prophets of old to mark the spots of great per- 
sonal deliverances or of special divine manifestations {o man, are 
no more. The memorial piles of the same material, once swarm- 
ing along the devious pathway of the children of Israel, from 
Egypt to Canaan, are known to us only through the writings 
of Moses and the chronicles of the bards and prophets of the 
Bible. The earth mound on the plains of ancient Greece, which 
showed where the might of Persia went down before the chivalry 
of Athens and her allies, is level now with the face of the sur- 
rounding country. The sites of the Tower of Babel and of 
numerous commemorative works of antiquity mentioned in his- 
tory cannot be even conjectuarally determined. The tumuli on 
the plains of Troy, which once told where the fallen brave on 
either side rested from the tumult of battle and storms of the ten 


At 


years war, live only on the misleading tongue of tradition or look 
out upon us through the idealizing mists of the epic of Homer. 

In modern times even monuments of marble and brass are 
perishing beneath the touch of the corroding tooth of time. In 
the Old World commemorative columns and works may be seen, 
on every hand, ruinous from decay. Even Westminster Abbey, 
the common mausoleum of England’s most illustrious dead, and 
the stately structure of the Invalides in Paris, the sepulehre of | 
the discrowned, but mightiest monarch in the annals of France, 
require constant and vigilant repairs to resist the assaults of time. 

In this country the few monuments which mark the burial 
spots of some of our nation’s most illustrious dead, are already 
partially in ruins. The marble memorial which points out the 
grave of President Monroe, the monolith erected to the memory 
of Pulaski, at Savannah, and the marble slab over the tomb of 
Jefferson, are fast disappearing beneath the abrasions of time and 
the pillage of visitors who value relics more than they do the 
memories of the illustrious sleepers below. The half-finished 
national monument in the Federal City, which the gratitude of 
the country began to erect to the memory of Washington, but 
which its parsimony and the decline in its appreciation of his 
great name and fame have not permitted, and, it is to be feared, 
will never permit it to complete, is, from its peculiar exposure 
to the ravages of the weather and time which its incompleteness 
invites, already ruinous in look, and will soon, unless completed 
or more adequately protected, become ruinous also in both mate- 
rial and superstructure. And so it ever has been, and so it ever- 
more will be, with monuments built of the perishing materials out 
of which men have usually constructed them. They hasten to 
decay from the first moment of their erection, and have the seeds 
of their final dissolution, embedded, from foundation to summit, 
through all their structure. 

But a Memorial University, in the very nature of the case, will 
constitute a more enduring monument than one even of marble 
and brass. Its buildings, of whatever architectural materials com- 


45 


posed, will of course be subject, like the brass and the marble of 
other monuments, to decay. But even in this purely material 
aspect of the case, a Memorial University, as a mere physical 
structure, would be likely to be far more enduring than the 
ordinary monuments erected by man. These, after receiving the 
finishing touch of the architect, are commonly abandoned to their 
fate. The rushing pinion of the centuries brushes against them. 
The winds and the rains, the storms and the lightning of heaven 
descend upon them. Soon they begin to fissure and crumble. No 
friendly help comes in time to heal the ever-deepening and finally 
incurable wounds in their material and fabric, as the public usually 
consigns completed monumental structures to the fatal outlawry of 
its neglect, and thus places them beyond the reach of the ministry 
of either its vigilance or its repair. In consequence, they soon 
become ruinous both in look and in substance, and, at the end 
of their destined period of duration, crumble down and pass out 
of the sight and also out of the remembrance of men. But the 
public buildings of a Memorial University would be placed under 
the guardianship of a watchful and ever present ministry of inspec- 
tion and repair. The public at large, interested in their preserva- 
tion, the Trustees, the Faculty, the students and all the neigh- 
boring friends and patrons of the Institution, would constitute a 
multitudinous police to watch for the first breaches of decay in 
them, to sound the alarm and to furnish the needed help to arrest 
the march of decline. And thus, like the fabled ship Argo which 
bore Jason and his comrades to the theft of the golden fleece of 
Colchis, and which repaired, as it decayed, by the pious watchful- 
ness of the Greeks, continued, as the legend tells us, finished and 
sound in all its parts, an object of popular veneration and respect, 
through all the long night of the legendary age of that glorious 
land; or rather like the marvellous fabric of our material frames 
which, ever repaired, as fast as they waste, by the wondrous chem- 
istry of the vital forces, remain, though ever changing, whole and 
fit tabernacles for the indwelling soul, the buildings of a Memo- 
rial University, ever repaired as soon as damaged by decay, would 


46 


endure as long as there were living men in the South, animated by 
sympathy with its memorial purpose and its educational offices, to 
lift a stone to rebuild their crumbling walls or to place a tile upon 
their mouldering roof. 

But after all, the enduring nature of a Memorial University, 
viewed as the monument of General Lee, is to be sought for rather 
in the moral results which will flow from it than in the probable 
long duration of its merely material structure. The educational 
ministry of the Institution will gradually prepare, in the educated 
minds and the cultivated hearts of the young men of the South, 
the materials for a moral monument grander far and more endur- 
ing than any fabric of brass or marble that our hands could build. 
Each young man, educated in the Memorial University and pre- 
pared by discipline and culture for the high duties of life, would 
constitute a goodly moral block, polished and fitly shaped, for his 
place in the moral superstructure. Each year would contribute a 
moral stratum to the edifice. Every generation would add to its 
ascending height. Higher and higher into the moral heavens of 
the South it would rise, as generation succeeded generation and 
age followed age in the roll of the centuries, until a moral monu- 
ment, visible to reason’s eye, would tower in the intellectual firma- 
ment, with the whole broad area of Southern society for its foun- 
dation and the whole moral sky of the South for its summit and 
covering dome. Such a monument as this would constitute, in 
reality, that monument in the hearts of a people of which oratory 
boasts and poetry sings as the noblest and most enduring com- 
memoration which the memories of the illustrious ones of the earth 
can receive. And then in the years which are to come, expanding 
the boast and justly sharing in the pride of the Roman matron 
who, pointing to her noble and cultivated sons, destined to become 
the unavailing martyrs of Roman liberty, exclaimed, these are my 
jewels, the people of the South, pointing to the hosts of educated 
and noble young men sent forth from the halls of the Memorial 
University, scattered through all parts of this great land of ours, 

winning proud reputations in the diversified pursuits of public, 


47 


and adorning all the circles of private, life, may proudly exclaim, 
these, these are the true and enduring monuments which we have 
erected to the memory of our immortal hero and patriot, General 
Robert E. Lee. 

Permit me now, by way of general summary and conclusion 
of the whole argument of this Address, to present, in a somewhat 
rhetorical form, the contrasted merits of the two monumental 
schemes most likely to divide the suffrages of the people of the 
South, embodied in the concrete reality of two, supposed to be, 
completed monuments. 

In the public cemetery for example, at Richmond, Virginia, 
stands a noble monumental column. Its foundations have been 
laid deep in the soil which drank to the full of the blood of the 
martyrs of the Lost Cause and its summit mounts high into the 
heavens which blushed red with the hue of the stricken fields of 
the conflict and flung back to the earth the echoes of the blended 
prayers of the dying for mercy and of the living for help. It has 
been erected by the hands and sanctified by the blessing of all the 
people of the South as their common monument to the memory 
of one of the greatest and most beloved heroes in their annals. 
Hard by the dead General, whose remains have been brought 
to the spot that the monument and its subject may not be dis- 
sociated, sleeps in the tent of his grave in the midst of his dead 
soldiers and comrades in arms whom he led along the rugged 
highways of the struggle and in the stormy day of the battle. 
It looks out over the proud city which was the metropolis of 
the fair clime for whose cause he fought, and is visible, at their 
homes, to many thousand citizens of the State which gave him 
birth. It is an object of veneration and respect to visitors from 
every land. The sons and daughters of the South view it with 
liquid hearts and moistened eyes as they think of their trodden 
clime and of the mighty sleeper below whose great heart bled 
and broke in its cause. Still fresh from the hands of its builders 
it stands erect and grand, in the beauty and the glory of its archi- 
tectural prime, without one scar or fissure from foundation stone 


48 


to summit in its colossal fabric. And ever as the lengthening 
years go by, reverent age and wondering youth visit the column 
and, as they look up to its awful form, it speaks to them with its 
monumental voice of all that is greatest in human life and most 
ennobling in human character and they depart from its presence 
refreshed, as with the dues from the Hermon of patriotism and 
with souls attuned to the harmony of great thoughts and noble 
aspirations. The gray centuries, fruitful in the ministry of change 
and decay pass in solemn procession. Political revolutions sweep 
over the land. The myriad changes in the social life of the peo- 
ple come and go. Fresh wars break out, run their mad careers 
and end in the enthronement of new heroes in the popular heart 
and the demand for new monuments to perpetuate their memory. 
Through all these cycles of change and decay the column at Rich- 
mond still stands and still speaks, though with ever diminishing 
potency in its utterances, to the hearts of men. But time’s effac- 
ing ministries are busy with its structure from summit to base. 
Cement and grapples loosen their hold upon its massive blocks 
and the whole fabric totters to its fall. The living generations 
of men, busy with their own affairs and caring only for the monu- 
mental commemoration of their own illustrious dead, withhold 
the needed and timely repairs. Century by century the column 
crumbles and finally sinks down, in scattered fragments, to the 
level of the earth. In time the curious traveller from other lands 
or the prying antiquary, strolling, in casual walk, among its blocks 
half-buried in the soil, wipes the dust from their upturned sur- 
faces but finds no name or inscription upon them to indicate who 
brought them to the spot or to declare the use to which they were 
once applied. History and tradition still tell of the virtues and 
the deeds of Robert E. Lee, but the colossal column erected at 
Richmond to perpetuate his memory has perished from the sight 
and from the remembrance of men. 

Turn now and view, with fancy’s eye, the contrasted picture 
whose outlines I have drawn upon the moral canvass of this, I 
fear, too protracted Address, to-day. 


A9 


On the spot where we are now assembled stands a noble Insti- 
tution of learning. It, too, has its foundations laid deep in the 
soil and lifts its covering domes high into the heavens of the 
blood-drenched and war-wasted land of the South. Over the 
most public entrance to its grounds has been inscribed, with 
suitable additions, an accommodated translation of the epitaph 
of the architect of St. Paul’s, so that to the uplifted eye of the 
visitor the entire superscription reads thus: General Robert E. 
Lee: If you seek for his monument look around you. The soil 
beneath and the skies above it are the soil and the skies of his 
native State whose banner of the proud device and the defiant 
motto “sic semper tyrannis,”’ streamed like a meteor over the 
deadliest fields of the late struggle between the States. Its 
geographic situation is fortunate in its felicitous adaptation to 
the combined educational and memorial purposes to which the 
Institution is dedicated. Grand and ennobling historic ante- 
cedents enrobe it with moral dignity and grandeur. For five 
years it was presided over by the great hero and patriot of the 
South whose monument it has become and all its Academic 
grounds and buildings are thronged with undying memories of 
his life, character and services. In the midst of its memorial 
buildings is the sepulehre which contains his honored remains 
and from it issue evermore educating influences which will in- 
struct and encourage the people of the South through all their 
generations. It has been splendidly endowed by contributions 
from all portions of the country. It is open free of cost to all 
who are entitled to its educational privileges. The grandeur of 
its proportions, the munificence of its endowment and the splendor 
of its Academic equipments constitute it the foremost Institution 
of learning in the world. It stands upon the soil of the South, 
an object of pride to all its people and of veneration and respect 
to every beholder. In it the memory of General Lee ascends 
to its permanent seat of ever-widening and ever-deepening influ- 
ence over the minds and hearts of the whole American people. 
Crowds of ingenuous youth from the South and from the North ~~ 

5 


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frequent its halls and struggle in generous rivalry on all the 
arenas of mind. The streams of its educational influence pour 
through all the moral arteries of the land. And ever, as the 
circling years go by, hoary age and strenuous manhood and 
wondering youth visit its memorial buildings and grounds, re- 
ceive the lesson which the genius of the place inspires and 
depart from its monumental scenes invigorated in patriotism 
and strengthened in resolution for all the conflicts of life.— 
Down the long line of the ages these memorial and educational 
offices of the Institution descend. The winds and the rains, 
the storms and the lightnings of centuries beat upon its build- 
ings, but they fall not, for they are founded upon the rock of 
the popular interest and affection which keep the ministry of 
repair ever at even pace with the ravage of decay. Political 
revolutions shake the land; social changes wax and wane; wars 
rage and new heroes are born of their bloody convulsions, but 
none of them displace the memory of Robert E. Lee from the 
minds and the hearts of men for it has become a fountain of 
blessing to the living in every age. Thus from lip to lip of 
the generations his name and his fame pass down the aisle of 
the centuries. The chorus of his praise swells out from the 
echoing corridors of the past; the men of each living present 
rise up and call him blessed; while far away in the horizon of 
every future the light of his influence, streaming out from the 
Memorial University, may still be seen irradiating, like the 
flush of auroral lights, the moral skies of the South. 
Gentlemen of the Literary Societies, I appeal to you, and 
through you I appeal to all the people of the South, to say, 
which of the two monuments that I have now described, that 
of the supposed monumental column at Richmond or that of 
the supposed Memorial University at Lexington, best befits the 
life and character, or will most worthily and lastingly transmit 
the memory of General Robert E. Lee to the future? If, with 
me, you and they believe that there is less a comparison than 
a contrast between the merits and claims of the two, and hold, 


51 


as I do, that a Memorial University is almost immeasurably 
to be preferred as his monument, then I earnestly invoke your 
and their codperation in the effort to establish it. 

The time is propitious for action, and invites to vigorous and 
united effort in behalf of the undertaking. The great heart of 
the South is still warm with love for the memory, and still glows 
with gratitude for the services of General Lee. Like the rock 
of the prophet in the wilderness, it needs only to be smitten with 
the rod of a timely and judicious appeal, to gush forth in streams 
of abundant help for the erection of a fitting monument to his 
memory. Encouraged by this animating and well-grounded as- 
surance, let us enter into the field of the enterprise and labor 
like men who struggle for a victory nobler in itself and more 
useful in result than any mere success in arms ever rewarded with 
triumphal procession and laurel in ancient, or with the applause 
of the million in modern times. Difficulties will have to be met, 
obstacles surmounted, and prejudices overcome. The doubts of 
some, the indifference of many, and, perhaps, the positive opposi- 
tion of a few, will not be wanting to perplex our counsels and to 
retard our movements. These, however, are but the impediments 
which assail every enterprise worthy of the strenuous labor and 
the arduous sacrifices which command success. They should 
animate and encourage, rather than depress dur hopes and efforts, 
as we know that the palms of the noblest triumphs are never 
won, either in public or in private life, without encountering 
the dust and the toil of the arena, as well as the gibes of the 
doubting Thomases of the world. Let us remember, as we labor 
in the good cause, that we labor to benefit the living no less than 
as to honor the dead. Let us feel that, as citizens of the South, 
we are under personal responsibility, to the extent of our power 
and influence, for the preservation and the diffusion of the lessons 
of the great life and character of our illustrious countryman. 
And when, as the fruit of our toils, a great Memorial University 
shall crown the spot where we are now assembled, we shall be 
cheered and gratified, to the end of our days on earth, by the 


52 


reflection that we have succeeded in accomplishing all that is 
necessary worthily to honor the memory of the great hero and 
patriot of the South, and in effecting much for the promotion of 
the moral and intellectual interests of the present and the coming 
generations of men. And then, when on anniversary occasions, 
or on casual visits, crowds of the old and the young, with some of 
us in the midst, shall gather at the base of the monumental walls 
of the Institution and speak, the one to the other, of the grandeur 
of the structure, the noble purposes to which it is dedicated, and 
the great and glorious deeds and virtues of him in whose honor 
it has been erected, as our hearts dilate under the stirring colloquy 
and the mighty memories of the place throng in upon us, our 
tongues shall break forth with the proud ejaculation: “Thank 
Heaven we also are the countrymen of Robert E. Lee, and we, 
too, helped to erect this noble monument to perpetuate his fame,” 











